28 January 2008

E AINDA... O PLANETA KOLOB!!!

In the Latter Day Saint movement [mormons], Kolob is a star or planet mentioned in the Book of Abraham as being nearest to the throne or residence of God. (...) The first known reference to Kolob is found in the Book of Abraham, published in the LDS volume of scripture entitled the Pearl of Great Price. The Book of Abraham was dictated by founder Joseph Smith, Jr. as he read from Egyptian scrolls that accompanied a traveling mummy exhibition. When this show passed through Smith's town of Kirtland, Ohio in 1835, Smith was approached about the scrolls based on his reputation for having published what he said were translations of ancient texts such as the golden plates. According to Smith, the scrolls described a vision of Abraham, in which Abraham:

"saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God;....and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest." (Book of Abraham 3:2-3.)

In an explanation of an Egyptian hypocephalus that was part of the Book of Abraham scrolls, Joseph Smith interpreted one set of hieroglyphics as representing:

"Kolob, signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God. First in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time. The measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit. One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the Egyptians Jah-oh-eh." (Book of Abraham)

(...) "If You Could Hie to Kolob" is a Latter Day Saint hymn that was written by William Wines Phelps, a prominent early Mormon. The music is taken from a well-known folk tune known as "Dives and Lazarus". It is hymn number 284 in the hymnal for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The hymn reflects doctrines unique to Mormonism, such as the eternal nature of spirit (including man's spirit) and matter. It also conveys doctrines elaborated by Joseph Smith, Jr., the first Latter-day Saint prophet, about the plurality of gods and eternal progression. The word hie means to go quickly; hasten.

24 January 2008

WE DIFFER MORE THAN WE THOUGHTMark Pagel(evolutionary biologist, Reading University, England)

The last thirty to forty years of social science has brought an overbearing censorship to the way we are allowed to think and talk about the diversity of people on Earth. People of Siberian descent, New Guinean Highlanders, those from the Indian sub-continent, Caucasians, Australian aborigines, Polynesians, Africans — we are, officially, all the same: there are no races.

Flawed as the old ideas about race are, modern genomic studies reveal a surprising, compelling and different picture of human genetic diversity. We are on average about 99.5% similar to each other genetically. This is a new figure, down from the previous estimate of 99.9%. To put what may seem like miniscule differences in perspective, we are somewhere around 98.5% similar, maybe more, to chimpanzees, our nearest evolutionary relatives.

Índios Mojave

The new figure for us, then, is significant. It derives from among other things, many small genetic differences that have emerged from studies that compare human populations. Some confer the ability among adults to digest milk, others to withstand equatorial sun, others yet confer differences in body shape or size, resistance to particular diseases, tolerance to hot or cold, how many offspring a female might eventually produce, and even the production of endorphins — those internal opiate-like compounds. We also differ by surprising amounts in the numbers of copies of some genes we have.

Cabeça de um negro - Albrecht Dürer

Modern humans spread out of Africa only within the last 60-70,000 years, little more than the blink of an eye when stacked against the 6 million or so years that separate us from our Great Ape ancestors. The genetic differences amongst us reveal a species with a propensity to form small and relatively isolated groups on which natural selection has often acted strongly to promote genetic adaptations to particular environments.

We differ genetically more than we thought, but we should have expected this: how else but through isolation can we explain a single species that speaks at least 7,000 mutually unintelligible languages around the World?

Huang-Ti, o imperador amarelo (China)

What this all means is that, like it or not, there may be many genetic differences among human populations — including differences that may even correspond to old categories of 'race' — that are real differences in the sense of making one group better than another at responding to some particular environmental problem. This in no way says one group is in general 'superior' to another, or that one group should be preferred over another. But it warns us that we must be prepared to discuss genetic differences among human populations. (WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?)